Fucked Up Medicine

Fucked Up Medicine

Where medical history meets dark humor. The stories of how doctors experimented, blundered, and somehow still saved lives.

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Phineas Gage: The Man Who Survived Having a Spike Through His Brain

Phineas Gage: The Man Who Survived Having a Spike Through His Brain

A railroad worker's tamping iron went straight through his skull, and he somehow walked it off...

January 15, 202415 min read

Alexis St. Martin: The Living Science Experiment

Experimentation

Alexis St. Martin: The Living Science Experiment

A gunshot wound that never healed right gave doctors a window into the stomach...

January 14, 202414 min read

The First Cardiac Catheterization: A Ballsy Mistake That Worked

The First Cardiac Catheterization: A Ballsy Mistake That Worked

A doctor inserted a catheter into his own heart. This was not approved. This was 1929.

January 13, 202413 min read

Transorbital Lobotomies: When Doctors Used Hammers on Brains

Transorbital Lobotomies: When Doctors Used Hammers on Brains

Doctors literally bashed people's brains with hammers to cure mental illness. Spoiler: it didn't work.

January 12, 202416 min read

Cocaine and Heroin: When Doctors Prescribed Hard Drugs

Cocaine and Heroin: When Doctors Prescribed Hard Drugs

Before we knew better, cocaine was a miracle cure. Then heroin was too. Then we had a lot of addicts.

January 11, 202414 min read

Bloodletting: When Doctors Bled Patients to Cure Everything

Bloodletting: When Doctors Bled Patients to Cure Everything

Headache? Bleed it out. Fever? Bleed it out. Pretty much everything? Bleed it out.

January 10, 202412 min read

Trepanation: Drilling Holes in Skulls Since the Stone Age

Trepanation: Drilling Holes in Skulls Since the Stone Age

Humans have been boring holes in heads for thousands of years. We still don't know why it worked sometimes.

January 9, 202411 min read

Medieval Medicine: When Doctors Tasted Your Pee

Experimentation

Medieval Medicine: When Doctors Tasted Your Pee

Doctors tasted pee, studied pee, made decisions based on pee. Medicine was weird.

January 8, 202410 min read

Smallpox Parties: Deliberately Infecting Yourself for Immunity

Infectious Disease

Smallpox Parties: Deliberately Infecting Yourself for Immunity

Before vaccines, people threw parties to deliberately catch diseases. What could go wrong?

January 7, 202412 min read

Ether Anesthesia: When Surgery Meant Getting High

Ether Anesthesia: When Surgery Meant Getting High

The first anesthesia was basically recreational drugs given in a surgery. People loved it. Too much.

January 6, 202413 min read